The night before Terrapalooza, Poly’s annual Earth Day celebration, entrepreneur and climate activist Aaron Fyke spoke to community members in Garland Auditorium about the climate crisis and decarbonization solutions. The event, which took place on Monday, April 13, was hosted by both the PolyGlobal program and Poly’s Heinz Ethics Speaker Series.
Fyke is the founder and managing partner of ThinLine Capital, a venture-capital firm that has started six climate-tech companies. He first spoke at Poly in 2019 with a talk that emphasized global success in the fight against climate change. He was invited to return this year, in conjunction with Terrapalooza, to share updates on global renewable energy developments.
The talk was facilitated by senior Global Scholars Matteo Mazzie and Carthan Connolly. US Representative Judy Chu, who represents the San Gabriel Valley, spoke briefly before Fyke.
“It’s important that we cultivate these conversations with you, the students, the next generation of leaders and innovators,” Chu told the audience.
Fyke began his presentation by defining climate change and explaining how fossil fuel emissions contribute to the warming of our planet. He introduced three questions that he would be addressing: must we change? Can we change? And will we change?
To answer the first question, Fyke presented staggering statistics on the increase of natural disasters in recent years; for example, in 2017 Hurricane Harvey’s rainfall was equal to 509 days of water flow over Niagara Falls. He emphasized the dramatic uptick in Southern California fires since his last talk at Poly, telling the story of how his own Altadena home narrowly survived the Eaton fire last year.
“With regards to climate change, we are at war,” Fyke said. “When facing war, we do not cower in blindness, in fear, in the dark.”
“Before this, I mostly thought about climate change in terms of environmental damage, but this presentation made it clear that it also has major social and political implications,” shared junior Elizabeth Huang.
After presenting the problem, Fyke went on to discuss the progress that has been made toward decarbonization across the world. He highlighted the importance of clean energy in the global economy, the projected shift away from oil and coal and how this shift has already begun with sharp decreases in the cost of renewable energy.
“Climate change seems like a big scary uncontrollable thing,” said Connolly, “but the fact that we’ve made change already should be a source of hope that we can continue to make change for the future.”
After the talk, Connolly and Mazzie facilitated a Q&A with Fyke. In response to Connolly’s question about whether or not we should be cautious about over emphasizing success in the fight against climate change, Fyke explained that hope is a more effective motivator than fear.
“There was a lot to process,” noted Director of PolyGlobal Rick Caragher after the event, “but in a time when our country has been taking steps to regress with our policies toward the environment, I think it was encouraging to see what else is going on.”
Fyke ended the presentation with a call to action. “I encourage all of you to use critical thought, and to make sure that you’re asking the right questions,” he urged to the audience.
